


Written July 4th 2018

by rosalinddd



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), a letter from steve to bucky, in that inbetween time while bucky is gone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-04 22:55:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17313416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosalinddd/pseuds/rosalinddd
Summary: a short letter that steve wrote to bucky after the events of infinity war





	Written July 4th 2018

JBB-

I was never so eloquent as you. Never could string a sentence together that told you a sliver of what I really felt. You used to laugh at me and tell me to stick to my patriotic speeches when I tried to. Or when I would write you a letter you'd tell me to stick to drawing when I tried to wax poetic. I shoulda told you to suck a dick and went on writing to you anyway. It just made me curious that that's all you did anymore. Write and write and write. I don't remember the last time I wrote something for myself, or for you as was usually the case when I took pen to paper. 

I feel like I'm always sitting here reading the words you never said aloud. Before, I was always watching. I was always waiting on you to come to me with more. I hate the stories. I hate the anger. I hate the bad things and bad men and bad times you spent away from me.

I've wished since the day I met you that you could be above me, far aloft from the sins I had collected, curated, created, woven. I wished you to be the man that could leave this Earth at the end of a beautiful line absolved and untouched. A saint rightly declared as I had seen you in my youth, in that jagged-edged youth. I watched the skies, I kissed the ground and waited on you to love me. If I had only known - only known in those small and short days that you were doing the same. Did we waste time? Did we waste years? Did I pray too much to rid myself of you? Did you push too hard to leave me? Was I naive to think that in another universe we could finally be granted our freedom? Was it worse of me to think that maybe this world, this new and present one, could be the one to give it to us?

Did you feel the same? Sometimes I was never sure if you were real.

I feel like I dreamt you up. When I was young and we were new and barely acquainted I walked the marble of a grand cathedral; I stood before God and in the absence of a father asked for a guide. Asked for a friend. Begged to feel loved. Begged for more than I had. I was greedy. And now I'm paying ten times over for it. Mourning again in the carnage of these wars I didn't want. 

I keep atoning. At least I'm trying to. And I'm wasting breath and blood on you again, doing the same shit I was doing when I was young. Should I just stop? Should I just die as I should have when I was a boy? Let my lungs collapse in? Let my eyes close and maybe, maybe that God that sent you would still take me in. Maybe I would see that haze of fog curling over that cliff of green that my ma loved so much back in Ireland; the one she told you all about before she died.

I dream like that now. I dream so restlessly of you and her so clean. _Absolved and untouched_ , laughing in the grass. Are your sisters there too? Your mother and father? Peggy? Our friends, the Commandos? Is Sam?

Why the fuck am I here? What is the plan? What is the purpose of constantly ripping you from me? Am I a pawn? It's so clear now that the world isn't this world, our world. It's endless and growing and I can't fucking save anybody anywhere. The others - aliens - gods - are coming and came and left and killed you and me in the same breath.

I want art classes with you in Brooklyn. I want your skin. I want your eyes. I want your words in my ear so sweet and kind, so old and aching and aged.

It took me five days to wash the blood from my hands because you were still on them. I kissed the grime under my finger nails and wept thinking I was washing you away.

It is too much, now, to ask for more. It is too much to ask to have you back again. I walked that holy aisle once and now I stand in the emptiness of that liar's pulpit. I've done all the waiting there was to do. Now I'm just. _Suspended_. Goddamn listless.

I'm sure of it now. I dreamt you up. I prayed too much and thought too highly of the world you and my mother crafted for me.

I dreamt you up

I dreamt you up

It's all been wind

I dreamt this up

I dreamt it up

I dreamt you up

And now I dream of nothing - I have nothing to lose.

-SGR

**Author's Note:**

> this was just a little something i had saved to the side when i was working on my main fic, "when the world was at war". i decided to post this bc im having WRITERS BLOCK with the ending for my main fic *sighs dramatically for an extended period of time* anyway this can be read within the narrative of my other fic but it works on its own too:) if you liked this check out the main fic:) i live and die for comments/kudos cheers x


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